Viewing App-V Packages

InstallAware versions beginning with version 2012 ship with an App-V Package Viewer that may be used to view App-V packages built with InstallAware's App-V Builder, or App-V packages coming from other sources.

The App-V Viewer, a special edition of Application Virtualization Explorer by Gridmetric, allows its users full visibility into the contents of any App-V package; including virtual application entrypoints, virtualized file resources, virtual registry and virtualized services. These resources may be examined for troubleshooting purposes and to better understand how the resulting virtual application package has been laid out - without ever needing to actually run it using an App-V Client.

Please note that if you need to modify the contents of your App-V packages, you may upgrade to Application Virtualization Explorer, which provides full read and write capabilities when working with all of your App-V packages.

To start the View App-V Package tool, from the InstallAware 2012 Start Menu group, select View App-V Package. Alternatively, you may view any App-V package directly from Windows Explorer by double-clicking the App-V package project file (the file with the.sprj extension).

To view the contents of an App-V package, use one of the following File menu options:

• Load SFT file: Loads only the binary contents of the package, excluding all application entrypoints. Best used to view the files, registry entries, and virtual services contained inside the package.
• Load App-V package: Loads the entire package, including all application entrypoints. Best used to view all aspects of the package.

After an App-V package has been loaded successfully, the following tabs are shown.

Package Configuration

This tab contains the following views, accessed by clicking or double-clicking their associated icons located in the lower-part of the tab.

Package settings

Shows the overall package configuration options which relate to naming, publishing, and virtual environment settings.

Customize MSI

Shows options which relate to the App-V package MSI file (if the App-V package does actually have an MSI file associated with it).

Published applications

Double-click the icon to access this view. Displays all published applications (application entry points) contained inside the package. Selecting an application entry point in this view shows settings related to that particular application; including naming, publishing, virtual environment settings, and scripting settings.

File associations

Double-click the icon to access this view. Displays all file-type associations contained inside the package. Selecting a file extension in this view shows settings related to that particular file extension; including naming, publishing, virtual environment settings, and scripting settings.

Files & Folders

This tab displays the internal directory structure of the virtual application package. All of the directories and files that make up the actual application(s) being virtualized are listed here. On the left-hand side of this tab, the directory structure of the package is displayed as a tree-view; allowing quick navigation to any desired virtual directory or file. On the right-hand side of this tab, the file and folder attributes of selected directory entries are displayed; including both standard file-system attributes as well as App-V specific virtualization attributes.

The App-V Client mounts this whole directory structure on the App-V virtual drive at the client machine. Any directories and files needing to be overlaid over actual physical partitions are mapped from underneath the VFS subdirectory (a subfolder located at the root of the package folder hierarchy). Resolved file path(s) for any such overlaid directory entries are shown next to the Virtualized as label on the right-hand side of this tab. By default an encoded (parametrized) file path is shown, but you may check the Resolve VFS targets option from the View menu to allow the decoding of variablized (parametrized) file paths into live physical folder paths (as would be valid on the machine where the package is being examined on).

In determining whether an overlaid virtualized directory (as found under the VFS path only) fully overrides the local one (i.e. no files or folders found on the physical system will be visible to the virtualized application), or is just merged (i.e. virtual files and/or folders not present physically are merged with the actual, physical folder contents as present on the local file system - with virtual elements taking precedence over physical elements in cases of collision), the icon for the virtual directory is indicative as follows: A grey folder with a blue symbol represents a merged directory, whereas a yellow folder with a blue symbol represents a fully overridden directory. Deleted files are also shown with their own symbol.

Virtual Registry

This tab displays the contents of the virtual registry contained inside the package, and functions much like Windows's own Registry Editor. The virtual registry is overlaid on top of the physical registry when a package is being run on an App-V Client, and virtualized application(s) are served a combined view of both of the physical and the virtual registries. To determine if a registry key contained inside the package fully overrides the local one (i.e. nothing from that key or underneath that key would be shown through from the physical registry), or is just merged (i.e. virtual registry values and/or extra keys not present locally would be merged with entries from the physical registry, with virtual values taking precedence in cases of collision), notice that the virtual registry key icons are visually different (and similarly for deleted keys, which are also displayed with their own particular icon).

Virtual Services

This view displays all virtualized services contained inside the package. App-V only supports virtual services in the manner wherein the service (set to automatic start) is started when the main virtualized application is launched through the application entry point, and then automatically stopped when the main virtualized application closes down.

Virtualized System View

This tab simulates how virtual applications inside the package would "see" the file system and the registry if running on the present machine.

Upgrading to Application Virtualization Explorer

While the App-V Viewer tool supports editing packages that you have opened for viewing, you cannot save your changes with this read-only edition. Please upgrade to Application Virtualization Explorer if you would like to be able to save changes you have made to your App-V packages. In addition to allowing saving changes made to your packages, with Application Virtualization Explorer you will also be able to:

• Access package repository functionality for quick loading from a library of multiple App-V packages.
• Manage AD group policy templates for centralized configuration of the Application Virtualization Explorer.
• Inspect the App-V Client's cached virtual environment files for better package troubleshooting on a particular App-V Client instance.
• Receive full support for Application Virtualization Explorer plug-in extensibility.